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The members of the Comunidade Indígena de
Atikum-Umã (Indigenous Community of Atikum-Umã)
call themselves Indians of the Atikum-Umã, in reference
to an ancestral. Umã is said to have been "the
oldest Indian" and the father of Atikum, whose descendants
grew up in the village of Olho d'Água do Padre
(former Olho d'Água da Gameleira). Another version
for the origin of the name claims that the word Atikum
appeared during a toré ritual. In terms
of documented sources, the first reference to the name
Atikum dates from the time of the official recognition
of those Indians by the Serviço de Proteção
aos Índios - Service for the Protection of the
Indians - (SPI) in the second half of the 1940s. In an
internal communiqué, an SPI official comments,
referring to the Indigenous Post of the Umã Hills,
that the post was first called Aticum, probably due to
a group with which the Umans were supposed to have mixed
and was called Aticum or Araticum. But, in the end of
the 19th Century, in the Diccionario Chorographico, Historico
e Estatistico de Pernambuco (Chorographic, Historical
and Statistical Dictionary of Pernambuco), by Sebastião
Galvão, Araticum was mentioned as a small locality
in the municipality of Floresta. And, in 1968, Cestmir
Loukotka, in his Classification of South American Indian
Languages, indicated Aticum or Araticum as the extinct
language of a tribe that lived near Carnaubeira, in the
State of Pernambuco, that spoke only Portuguese. What
is known for sure is that the correct spelling for the
name of the group ended up being defined as Atikum, and
that they do not establish a self-reference as Atikum-Umã
Indians, but rather as Indians of the Atikum-Umã.
That indicates subordination to the descent of Umã
to Atikum, who formed the village (indigenous community). |
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01:: photo: Museu do Índio
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